Damn, I wish I could go see this film tonight but I’m working! Duke Mitchell’s lost film,Gone With The Pope,finally finished by Bob Murawski will unspool at the super cool New Beverly Cinema tonight July 13th at 7:30 pm. The story goes that Murawski tracked down Duke’s son and was given 10 boxes of film, some notes and a VHS copy. He began working on it in his spare time and now it’s ready. Hats off to Bob for dedication and perseverence and honoring the work of a deceased filmmaker. A Great Accomplishment! Duke Mitchell had an act in the 50’s with Sammy Petrillo, they were like Dean Martin,& Jerry Lewis clones, they made one film Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla before a lawsuit put an end to their act. So thanks to Murawski and his partner Sage Stallone for resuscitating this lost gem and their Grindhouse Releasing for getting it out.
The great editor Dede Allen has passed on. She was the Queen of New York Editors and she started the careers of many big name editors working today. I met her several times and spoke to her about mutual friends. She knew my old buddy and mentor Frank G. Host and started out Frank’s pal Hugh Robertson on his career. Frank and Hugh were some of the first Afro American film editors in New York. Dede cut some incredible films. Some of my favorites are Odds Against Tomorrow, The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon, and Slaughterhouse Five. But I really love The Hustler in my opinion one of the best edited films of all time. I knew the apprentice film editor, a guy names John Taylor, a black filmmaker. Dede integrated the cutting room before almost anyone else. Dede edited Warren Beatty’s massive film Reds. I remember when it was being edited in NY. They took over Trans Audio on 54th street, right upstairs from Studio 54. It was a gigantic job, there must have been 50 people working in Post on that film. She leaves behind a son, Tom Fleischman, an excellent mixer and a great guy. I had the pleasure of working with him back in the 80’s, my condolences go out to him. This is the end of an era, Dede changed film and editing for all time. She will be missed.
A film of overwhelming moods, everything in this film seems filtered through a veil of sadness. Visually stunning, the art direction and cinematography are wonderfully rich. The colors jump off the screen in beautiful compositions. Director of Photography Nic Roeg really outdoes himself here. And Bernard Hermann’s music sinks you deeper and deeper into a state of lugubrious drugged oblivion, like a person slipping deeper and deeper into a bottomless vat of viscous oil. The powerful rhythms and images of dream logic make this film even more effective. For example the woman who burns herself with her books and Montag’s nightmare.
Also I love films made in the 60’s yet set in the future for their take on design, it’s the 60’s taken to a super cool extreme, like they had reached the apogee of design and then found a way to show that somehow in the future it would be improved upon in interesting ways.
The firetruck, the monorail, the doors that slide open on their own. Big flat panel TV’s hanging on your living room wall.Truffaut didn’t like this film that much although Ray Bradbury did. I think Truffaut is not always a fair judge of his own films since he didn’t like The Bride Wore Black either and to me that’s one of his best films. A fascinating depressing work of Art, check it out on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The opening credits are spoken over images of TV antennas, no writing allowed in the future! Montag forces a group of his wives friends to listen as he reads from a book by Charles Dickens, an emotional passage about the death of the writer’s wife. One woman breaks down in tears, the rest say he’s disgusting, “people aren’t supposed to upset other people, that’s why they did away with books in the first place!” This sounds to me like our politically correct society of today where you can’t say anything slightly off center without being pilloried. Also everyone takes massive amounts of prescription drugs, the whole population is medicated! The mindless totalitarian society hypnotized by Television and since there is no writing allowed, there can be no scripts for the actors on TV, sounds to me a lot like Reality Shows. Now The that the Supreme Court has allowed Corporations to spend as much as they want on political campaigns Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t seem so far away. I just heard that it will be re-made with Tom Hanks as Montag, Ray Bradbury is in frail shape this could finish him off. So check it out and see what you think, it is a very unique, disturbing film.
I bought the dvd of Performance and this cool documentary was on there. Jack Nitzsche. Jr. is interviewed and a lot of other interesting people. Frank Mazzola’s interview is informative and deep. Jack Jr. says his father got one of the 1st Moog synthesizers for this score ( the 9th one made), how cool is that.
Jack Nitzsche, a genius at creating music that made films come alive
Mazzola talks about intercutting the opening sequences and how “everything they tried worked” or “was right”. I know from experience that sometimes in the editing room you can reach a state of consciousness, some times from exhaustion or ingesting mind altering substances, where the energy flows right through you into the film, the film becomes alive on the editing machine, it seems to breathe on the picture head, the characters get off the screen and walk around on your flatbed editing machine.
Besides being a great editor Frank M. was also an actor, that’s him on the right in Rebel Without A Cause. Dig That Crazy Pompadour!
If you want to experience that kind of editing watch the opening of Performance, actually the entire film but the opening is particularly strong. Mazzola said they worked from 7 at night to 5 in the morning, I think they cut it at Warner Hollywood in Sam Goldwyn’s old office.
Get Out Of My Office!
Funny to think of Goldwyn’s ghost watching these two visionaries making this psychedelic poem of violence, sex, drugs, music, polymorphous perversity that was like a bomb going off in Hollywood and Midnight Movie house across the world. Like a virus of decadence infecting the minds of the stoned out audiences in movie theaters in middle class suburbs. What a trip!
Here for your viewing pleasure is a documentary about Donald Cammell, director of Performance , a hugely influential film that captures the drug infused psychedelic culture of 60’s London like no other. I knew the composer Jack Nitzsche for a long time, this was one of his greatest scores. He told me Mick Jagger had gotten him the composing gig on this film. When the Rolling Stones first came to America, they sought out Nitzsche because they loved his arrangements of the Phil Spector produced hits and wanted to work with him. I guess this was payback. It’s a unique score calling on a rostrum of enormous talents, Ry Cooder, Merry Clayton ,The Last Poets, Randy Newman, Lowell George, Mick Jagger to name just a few and Jack was the connective tissue that brought them all together. I must comment on Frank Mazzola’s editing as well. it’s groundbreaking, hallucinatory, fracturing reality like a broken mirror then putting the pieces back together in a beautiful, psychedelic way. Once again hugely influential although there is no one today following through on the potential revealed. Like a real Fairy Tale where Magic is beautiful, fascinating but dangerous, potentially deadly or perhaps capable of driving one mad.
“Peace On Earth” or ” Purity Of Essence”! The letters P.O.E. are the A-bomb attack recall code thought up by General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb!
Rainwater and Grain Alchohol!
My old pal Pablo Ferro told me that WeeGee was the still photographer on Strangelove. Stanley knew WeeGee from his days as a young New York photographer for Look magazine.
Watch The Birdie!
Pablo also told me that Peter Sellers was going to play bomber pilot Maj. T. J. “King” Kong but Sellers broke his leg and Kubrick brought in Slim Pickens.
Major Kong Rides The Bomb!
Another friend. Ray Lovejoy, worked as the assisstant editor on the film. He told me that Peter Sellars did many improvised variations in his performances as President Muffley and Dr. Strangelove. Maybe one day Stanley’s daughter will investigate the outtakes.
Lt. Mandrake trying to cope with Gen.Ripper
Legend has it that some negative was destroyed in a lab in England, Kubrick flipped and moved his negative to another lab but he insisted it be moved in an armored car! Ray also told me that Pablo went to the lab late one night, he was working on the title sequence. He barges in at midnight, sporting a Mohawk haircut and wearing an electric Indian blanket. The entire negative cutting department resigned! They quit, walked off! Pablo was ahead of his time.
So Happy Holidays from Dr. Strangelove and all his friends here at Film Forno. Peace On Earth, Purity Of Essence or whatever floats your holiday boat.
Here’s Peter Sellers interviewing WeeGee:
Sellers riffs on English accents on the Strangelove set.
Although there are probably millions of words being written about Paul Newman this very second due to his recent passing I felt inspired by seeing his 1968 directorial debut last night on TCM, Rachel, Rachel. Starring his wife Joanne Woodward and a lot of other great actors, most noticeably Estelle Parsons and Frank Corsaro, I mention Corsaro not only because of his fine acting but also because this is his only film role! He achieved fame as a stage director and as head of The Actor’s Studio, a legendary character.
Newman and Estelle Parsons on the Set
The story goes that Newman and Woodward shopped around for a director and didn’t get any takers. Newman had studied directing at Yale and decided to go for it. He created a rare and wonderful film, the sum effect being so much greater than all it’s parts. By this I mean that as I watched the film, there were parts that I thought great, parts I thought OK, maybe the direction seemed a little naive but at the end I was overwhelmed with the sensation of having just watched a great film. Due in a large part to the performance of Joanne Woodward, It is literally unlike any other film acting I have seen. She is such a unique talent, so unaffected, so true, it’s hard to put into words the way she works in this film. Once again at the end of the film I was overcome at how great she was in it. Not any one scene but the whole cumulative effect of the film, it’s magical. This is the kind of film that I wish would get made here in America more often, real people, real parts, no explosions or car chases. Just great characters struggling with their existence here on planet Earth at a particular time in a particular place. The stuff Life is made of, in this case in Connecticut in 1968. And it’s not just acting that makes this film great, there are some wonderful images as well, a date at his family’s dairy farm that James Olson takes Joanne woodward on, he makes her drive the tractor, she forks some hay on him from the hayloft. Things youngsters would do and here she is a middle-aged woman on her first date. Also the end sequence of Joanne and a baby at the beach , so beautiful, so moving. And a flashback scene of Woodward as a young girl sneaking into the basement where her father worked as a mortician. Seeing her father prepare a young boy’s body for burial. The way he tends to the dead boy, incredible. Paul was ably abetted by the great editor Dede Allen, here at the peak of her creative powers and it shows. Joanne Woodward was angry that Paul did not get nominated for an Academy Award for this film, she threatened to boycott the ceremony (She was nominated) but Paul talked her into it. Let’s all praise Paul Newman, he could have just acted in films and raced cars and enjoyed his life but he was an Artist, he had to struggle and make films and I salute him for that.
p.s. Here’s an article about the shooting of Rachel, Rachel, reminisces by the towns people that were there. It sounds like they had a great time. Article
They’re screening Stanley Kubrick’s mega opus 2001 at the Edison as part of the Jules Verne Fantasy Film Festival right here in downtown LA. Info here. I saw this film in a re-release in 1975 at the Bellvue Theater in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. It was projected in 6 track 70mm. I went to a matinee show with my girlfriend and when we got to the box office the ticket seller said “Wait a minute.” Then she came back and said “OK, the manager said we’ll run it.” We were the only people at that screening! Just the two of us in the gigantic theater with an enormous screen! It was incredible. I knew the editor of 2001. A guy named Ray Lovejoy. This was the first film he edited! He had been 1st Assistant editor on Dr. Strangelove and Lawrence Of Arabia. He told me that Kubrick basically lost his mind making this film. Before 2001 he was a fun guy, great to hang out with. But 2001 was such a gigantic, complicated project and Kubrick was such a perfectionist he lost himself in the overwhelming tide of technical details, personally overseeing every aspect of the film, even ( so I’ve been told) calling every first run theater the film was shown in to make sure it was presented properly! Yow! Oh well, hats off to Stanley Kubrick, Ray Lovejoy, Arthur C. Clark and everybody else who worked on this film and passed on through the Stargate or obelisk or whatever portal to the next dimension.
P.S. I met this guy at the Chelsea Hotel back in the 70’s
Enzo G. and Q.T.
I attended Enzo G. Castellari’s 70th birthday party at the Italian Cultural Institute last night and it was a blast! I got to talk for quite a while with Enzo, a true maestro and a real gentleman. This was kind of amazing since it was a party in his honor and everyone was there to see him. We were interrupted several times by actors from his films, including Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson who appear in the original Inglorius Bastards akaQuel maledetto treno blindato. Lou Ferrigno ( the Incredible Hulk) , Edd “Kookie” Byrnes, Pia Zadora and John Saxon were there as well. I tried to complement John Saxon on his work in Mario Bava’s La Ragazza Che Sappeva Troppio, or The Girl Who Knew Too Much, or The Evil Eye, but he didn’t want to hear it. I guess he was in a hurry to get back to The Planet Of Blood . But Enzo really got excited when I asked him about his working as an editor. His father, Marino Girolami, directed over 100 films and Enzo told me that he grew up in the editing room. That’s how he got to spend time with his father, by hanging around the editing room. Also he’d go to the cutting room every night after shooting and tell the editor how to cut the scene he’d shot the day before. He loves editing and tells his students at the Arte Institute, ” If you want to be a director you must first learn editing!” Any way it was a great evening, honoring this giant of Italian Film, It made everyone there happy, seeing how happy Enzo was at being honored for his birthday and for the DVD release of his great Inglorius Bastards! Go out and buy it! From Severin Films!
Here’s the trailer!
They screened the recently restored print of Sergio Leone’s epic masterpiece at The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences last night. All I can say is “It was magnificent!” The crew at Triage Motion Picture Services went all out. Paul Rutan flew to Rome and got a 2 perf Techniscope Interpositive made from the original camera negative. Then they borrowed Martin Scorsece’s IB technicolor print from the original theatrical release and timed to that. I must say it looked like Technicolor! They got great saturation that comes close to IB Technicolor. It was amazing.
The sound was restored as well and the mono mix sounded great. Did you ever notice in this film, whenever somebody is shot and killed a horse whinnys immediately afterwards and really loudly. Check it out. Also this is the epic Leone Western that features a powerful female character. Claudia Cardinale is as big a character as Bronson, Robards, and Fonda.
It’s in…
The Eyes, Chico…
They Never…
Lie!
These beautiful giant faces filled the enormous screen at the Academy in Incredible Leone Close Ups and the magnificent vistas of Monument Valley never looked so good as photographed by Tonino Delli Colli on 2-perf! You can really see the attention to detail Leone and his crew put into the sets and costumes by watching this film on a big screen. The pace may be slow compared to films made today but it gives you time to look around the frame and see all the beautiful objects, textures, lighting. Leone did scrupulous research on Western costumes and props and it comes through.
One Of The Greatest Flashbacks In All Of Cinema
When you top it all off with the music of Ennio Morricone it’s an unbeatable combination. The movie is really incredible images accompanied by soaring emotional score, wonderfully arranged and performed by great musicians, interspersed with great dialogue, not many words but all carefully chosen, it was a revelation to hear how many laughs the dialogue got. The audience was right there with the film for the entire time. Thanks also in part to the masterful editing of the great Nino Baragli. If you get a chance to see the restored version of this film in a good theater, I urge you to go and see it. It will be a revelation.
I finally watched The Noah, a film I had heard about many years ago. The Noah is directed by Daniel Bourla, it stars Robert Strouse in a one man tour de force performance. He plays an Army Sergeant, who also happens to be the last man on Earth after a nuclear holocaust. Strauss washes up on an island that was once a Chinese communist military base.
He immediately begins taking inventory and building a latrine. His Army training keeping him active in the face of his insane predicament. I think the film was shot in Puerto Rico on the island of Vieques, the same island Peter Brook shot Lord Of The Flies on a few years earlier.
Strauss invents an imaginary friend named Friday, all is well until Friday comes up with Friday Ann, an imaginary girl friend. Then all bets are off, Strauss is jealous of Friday and his girl and so they disappear, leaving Strauss alone.
Happy Birthday Noah!
All Alone
Here’s the thing about this film. When I first started working in Editing, it was through the auspices of a guy named Frank Host, one of the nicest people ever to grace our planet. Frank was Afro American, he grew up in Harlem. A super intelligent, talented person, he was working in an office when some of the filmmakers working there noticed him and gave him a shot at working in a cutting room. Now this was back in the 50’s. There were very few, probably no Afro American film editors at that time. But some progressive minded filmmakers had recently moved to N.Y.C. from Hollywood to get away from the McCarthyistic Communist witch hunts and some of these open minded people were willing to give a young Black man a chance. Frank told me he worked for a guy named Irv Fagin, an editor who had been a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought the Fascists in Spain.
Maos in The Moonlight
Noah Or Moses?
Anyway there were three Black editors of that period that I knew of, Frank, John Carter ( who’s still going strong) and Hugh Robertson ( a good friend of Frank’s who worked with DeDe Allen among others). Frank told me about this film he worked on called The Noah. He described scenes from it and talked about the director, Daniel Bourla, and what a talented guy he was. How he had struggled to make this independent film, against enormous odds and in a constant state of financial turmoil. Frank finished working on the film, I guess Mr. Bourla ran out of cash and the film languished in obscurity. But then I see from the IMDB that it was finished in 1975, I’m not sure when Frank worked on it but I think it was a few years earlier.
So when I see the film Frank is mentioned as a member of the editorial staff but the main credit goes to another guy. He probably was the last guy to work on the film. Did he undo all of Frank’s work? Re-cut the film from dailies? Was any of Frank’s editing used in the final film? Mysteries of the Film Credit Process. As with many things on Planet Earth the guy who gets the credit is not always the guy who did the work or had the idea.
Tomorrow, Friday May 2nd Sergio Leone’s epic masterpiece Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo will screen at the NuArt Theater in Los Angeles. They will show the uncut version with 20 minutes of deleted footage. The original cut of the film was 3 hours long. Chris Mankiewicz told me that he was a VP for United Artists at the time and it was his job to cut the movie down for an American release. He went to Leone and gave him the bad news. Leone grudgingly gave his OK but only on the condition that Chris use Nino Baragli, the film’s original editor. Chris agreed and made the cuts with Nino. Leone approved and that’s the version we all grew up with.
The Circle Of Death
Cut to a few years ago, John Kirk head of restoration for MGM contacted Triage Motion Picture Services, it seems an original uncut print of GBU had turned up at a Customs House in Italy. A print of a film had to be submitted to a government office to get a stamp of approval so it could be distributed. So using this as a guide I was called in by Triage to recreate as closely as possible to the original a new version of the film, using the best elements available and putting it in synch. Also rescoring one scene with a cue from an LP of the soundtrack. It was a real puzzle but I got it put back together with John Kirk, Tony Munroe, and Paul Rutan Jr. of Triage. That’s the version screening at the NuArt tomorrow. So go check it out and look for my name in the end credits!
